We’ve “Updated” our ideas about what “Pennant Race Baseball” means to US; thus broadening our horizons and expanded the universe of topics we will be discussing here.

While I was growing up, and through most of my adult life, professional baseball WAS season-long Pennant Races that WERE the best possible baseball ever. And if you can believe it (and you can, because it’s true), the Grand Finale, was EVEN BETTER—The World Series. When MLB expanded to 24 teams in 1969, baseball fans had FOUR excellent professional baseball Pennant Races each Regular Season. MLB’s excellent Post-Season was tripled. The LCSs, gave fans not 1, but 3 Post-Season Series. As a matter of fact, professional baseball’s season-long “Series” format and Pennant Races were a unique quality in all of Professional Sport. We believe these qualities were major contributing factors in Baseball being the best Sport in America—”The National Pastime”.

Sadly, with MLB going to 2nd place finishers making the Post-Season in 1994, the league and its fans lost true Pennant Race Baseball, and it yearly re-creation of ”The Best Baseball Ever”. While “The Wild Card” was indeed “New”, it was certainly not possible for MLB to “Improve” on “The Best Possible Baseball Ever”. (True Pennants are claimed by Pennant winners, only after Regular Seasons end. With this in mind, it is our belief, that the “advertised” claim that Pennants are awarded after LCSs, is an illogical assertion indeed!)

With MLB and other influential groups, organizations, and institutions, apparently seeking to put the word “Best” on Life’s B -List, we at pennantracebaseball.com feel a growing sense of personal duty to write about the things we experience as “The Best” in all aspects of Life. In so doing, we hope to be a leader in bringing to the forefront, “The Best” that Life has to offer all of US.

The group “Kansas” in “Carry On My Wayward Son” mused that wisdom is NOT knowing. This “unwise” philosophizing is a combination of: (1) “1984′s”, “Ignorance is Strength” and; (2) ”The Wizard of Oz”‘s, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”. Since wisdom IS knowledge, and a Just Republic needs a wise citizenry, I would ask you to look to Pennantracebaseball.com, as we work to reveal what is happening behind ALL of our Nation’s public “curtains”. Here is a first thought I would ask you to consider.

Why would any wise major league baseball executive, player, or fan do anything to weaken MLB’s best product and game: Season long Pennant Races and a World Series that is worthy of its name? This is what we have always thought MLB teams were formed, and their players born, to compete for. It is only this highly competitive playing field that contributes to their giving to US (a quaint notion?)—their “personal” best effort. Which wise sports fan would accept less—we ask?

* PRB Commissioner’s Administrative Decision: With full 162 game schedule, 1/2 game finishes are impossible. This parodox was resolved by expanding DET 4 NYY 3 2011 season record to DET 10 NYY 8; which is the same winning percentage (.571) over 18 game PRB schedule. I then awarded Detroit the 1/2 game needed to “balance out” the schedule.